Telemedicine refers to the practice of medicine at a distance where the patient and the medical professional are at different locations, and communicate via a computer network, or telecommunications system, which provides for the live exchange of information between the patient and medical professional locations. Applications may include tele-surgery, tele-mentoring, or related medical-related exchanges between users at different locations. A typical telemedicine environment includes a camera at a medical professional location that captures live or near real-time images of a patient, and transmits the images electronically to a computer at a remote location where a doctor or other medical professional may view the images on the computer's display screen, and provide medical services for the patient such as diagnosis, virtual assistance to a local surgeon, or even surgery, for example, with the assistance of robotic medical devices co-located with the patient and remotely controlled by the doctor.
Telemedicine operations such as diagnosis, surgery, teaching, and so on often present a challenge to the remote viewer of the displayed electronic images of the patient, in particular, with respect to determining from the images a length or depth of a wound, incision, skin lesion, or other region of interest to the remote medical professional viewing the images on the display screen.